Rosa Parks: Angry, Not Tired

In the popular legend, Parks is portrayed as a tired old seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama, who, on the spur of the moment after a hard day at work, decided to resist the city's segregation law by refusing to move to the back of the bus on December 1, 1955. She is typically revered as a selfless individual who, with one spontaneous act of courage, triggered the bus boycott and became, as she is often called, "he mother of the civil rights movement." What's missing from the popular legend is the reality that Rosa Parks was a veteran activist whose defiance of segregation laws was not an isolated incident but a lifelong crusade. Also downplayed is that Parks was part of an ongoing movement whose leaders had been waiting for the right moment to launch a campaign against bus segregation. In hindsight, it may appear that the boycott's success was inevitable. In fact, its effectiveness was the result of leaders'decisions about tactics and strategies and their capacity to mobilize thousands of ordinary people in a complex, year-long grassroots challenge to the city's political and economic establishment.